Grenada

Classique Ceramics and Pottery

Love that wooden sculpture

Cool original Amerindian pottery fragments inspire new interpretations  for sale

 And I got to spend a lovely afternoon with fellow blogger Heather and her husband  T of Free Spirit

One of her lovely paintings of a banana leaf

 T cutting some sweet coconuts

Their puppy

Go to Maggie in the market for the freshest spices

 and artisanal soaps and candles

View from Fort George

More Fab Flora Grubb

I had these to post since September, from my return visit to the fabulous Flora Grubb in San Francisco.

I loved agaves even before I lived in a dry rocky/sandy island

can't remember the name of this one

The Edsel planter

Really cool garden art

Striking carnivorous plants

 I like these aloes above and the combo of reds below

The famous vertical succulent planter

 Another cool plant

The famous jumbo succulent planter

Piet Oudolf

Check out the beautiful slide show

and article:

Q&A: Piet Oudolf on Designing a Winter Garden

in New York Times

Wat Pha Kaeo

Wat Pha Kaeo is my personal favourite Wat in Laos, because of the beautiful statutes and serene feel on the terrace. This temple was originally built in 1565 by command of King Setthathirat, as his personal place of worship.

The temple was rebuilt with French help between 1936 and 1942. Wat Pha Kaeo is now used as a museum housing some beautiful Buddhist sculpture.

above: naga detail on staircase
below: hand detail on sculpture

Back to Laos

Naga detail

I have hardly time to breathe for the past two months with work, moving house and work travel.  I do have lots of pics to post and will try to do these regularly this month.


These are pictures from the That Luang Stupa in Vientiane, Laos. According to Wikipedia, Pha That Luang in Lao legend was originally built as an Indic temple in the 3rd century. “Buddhist missionaries from the Mauryan Empire are believed to have been sent by the Emperor Ashoka, including Bury Chan or Praya Chanthabury Pasithisak and five Arahata monks who brought a holy relic (believed to be the breast bone) of Lord Buddha to the stupa.[2] It was rebuilt in the 13th century as a Khmer temple which fell into ruin.

In the mid-16th century, King Setthathirat relocated his capital from Luang Prabang to Vientiane and ordered construction of Pha That Luang in 1566.

In 1641, a Dutch envoy of the Dutch East India Company, Gerrit van Wuysoff, visited Vientiane and was received by King Sourigna Vongsa at the temple, where he was, reportedly, received in a magnificent ceremony. He wrote that he was particularly impressed by the "enormous pyramid and the top was covered with gold leaf weighing about a thousand pounds". However, the stupa was repeatedly plundered by the Burmese, Siamese and Chinese.

Pha That Luang was destroyed by the Thai invasion in 1828, which left it heavily damaged and left abandoned. It was not until 1900, when the French restored to its original design based on the detailed drawings from 1867 by the French architect and explorer Louis Delaporte. However the first attempt to restore it was unsuccessful and it had to be resigned and then reconstructed in the 1930s.”

We got some great pics of the monks-these were not as effortless as they look as we had to "stalk" the monks for quite some time.